Alluette's Jazz Cafe

How to even start.

At the beginning, I suppose.

4:15pm - Maggie sends me a text. She wants to see some Sinatra-esque music and go dancing. Sounds like a plan. Except...Charleston really doesn't have anything like that. I fire up Google and discover Porgy's Other Place, a jazz cafe I dimly recall seeing while waiting in line at Trio. This is where we'll go.

5:30pm - My friend Adam calls to see if we're up to anything. I explain The Plan. He and his girlfriend will join us for dinner at 8:30pm.

7:30pm - I start getting nervous about the menu, since I haven't seen it. Many Google searches later I discover that Porgy's has in fact closed. But I swear I've seen a jazz cafe recently in that location. I Google the address (137 Calhoun St). It appears Porgy's closed and reopened in June 2009 as Alluette's Jazz Cafe. Digging a little more, there is an Alluette's Cafe (evidently of the non-jazz variety) on Reid St. downtown that serves "organic soul food". The titular Alluette Jones recently expanded to the aforementioned Calhoun St. location, opening the jazz cafe with an abbreviated version of the original cafe's menu. The reviews for the original location are great, but I cannot find a single review of the new location. Odd, but I am assuaged.

8:30pm - We arrive. There is no band in sight and the place is abandoned, save two customers seated at opposite ends of the bar. I make up elaborate backstories for them. Tony and Will used to be friends (played together in a billiards league, in fact) and would often get a postprandial cocktail together at Alluette's to escape their wives. But after a Craigslist lawnmower deal went south (what a coincidence that it was Will anonymously selling his mower, and that it was none other than Tony who replied!), they aren't on speaking terms, though both continue to frequent Alluette's, preferring the improvisations of the Oscar Rivers Trio to their wives complaining about window treatments.

My daydreaming is interrupted by a woman in an overcoat who asks us why we are here. I realize she is a waitress, though she looks more customer. We tell her we're in for dinner. She seems genuinely shocked, but recovers quickly and leads us to a table in the back, near the stage.

8:40pm - Adam and his girlfriend, Carly, arrive. Adam didn't bring a jacket in spite of the cold weather. As the evening wears on, this proves an ill-fated decision.

8:45pm - We order drinks. I ask what types of beer are available. Our waitress starts slowly naming the standard domestics, but also lists something called "Red Fire" that I've never heard of, and wind up ordering.

8:50pm - My "Fat Tire" arrives. Surreal service experience begins in earnest. We order some lamb sandwiches and tilapia off the sparse menu.

9:30pm - Forty minutes have passed. No food has arrived. Our sandwiches are evidently more complex than the menu would indicate. Our waitress has come by a number of times, not to update us re:our food, but to literally interrupt our conversation so we can talk about that various places she has lived. She is so nice and oblivious that we can't be upset. Also, it's freezing cold due to the band having propped open the door to bring in their equipment. Recall, Adam does not have a jacket. It is approximately 40° F. We swaddle ourselves in Bourbon & Cokes.

9:40pm - Adam begins to shake from the cold. We quickly order two more rounds of Bourbon & Cokes.

9:50pm - Food arrives. We are ravenous, and dig in. But wait, what's this? A few bites in, no one has said a word. Is the food...actually good? Like really, really good? Farm fresh produce? Piping hot, properly cooked fish? Yes. With lamb sandwiches for $10, this ain't 5-star dining, but against all the odds, the food is super fresh and rock-solid good. It's too bad it has to be served in such a bizarre, apathetic environment. The food is compelling enough to make me want to try Alluette's original location, but the experience is bad enough that I'll never go back to the jazz cafe. It is especially disappointing because I love live jazz and there is very little of it in Charleston.

10:15pm - The Oscar Rivers Trio, the house band, finally comes on. They can really play, but it's too late and we soon head home.

Alluette's Jazz Cafe
137 Calhoun St
Charleston, SC 29401

Chappy's on Church (Nashville)

Located about forty miles outside New Orleans, Chappy's Seafood Restaurant had been a fixture of the Gulf Coast culinary scene for over twenty years. But when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, John "Chappy" Chapman lost both his restaurant and his home. Less than a year later, Chappy was resettled in the West End area of Nashville, TN and reopened his restaurant as Chappy's on Church - a high end restaurant specializing in traditional Creole and Cajun seafood dishes.

Maggie and I both went to Vanderbilt University, so we have a bond with Nashville and decided to spend New Year's Eve there, visiting a few old friends and enjoying the live music that pours out the door of nearly every restaurant and bar in the city. We picked Chappy's for our New Year's Eve dinner.

Ducking into Chappy's from an unseasonably cold Nashville night, the first thing we noticed was the size and scale of Chappy's main dining room. I have no trouble believing the web site's claim that they can seat 220 for dinner. It's a giant rectangle of a place with French Quarter-inspired lights dangling from the ceiling and red and green taffeta curtains draping the windows in front, and the booths in the back.

Open and boxy with a huge aisle flanked by tables running down the center, if it were empty there couldn't be a more depressing layout. The word "intimate" would just bounce around the place laughing like a poltergeist. But on this night, Chappy's was packed. I don't know what a normal dinner service looks like, but at capacity Chappy's ambiance is cheerful enough, even if it feels a bit impersonal and, as one of our dinner companions pointed out, looks a little bit like a Chinese food restaurant.

Our waitress came over sniffling and fanning herself with her notepad, obviously sick. A friend asked what types of gin were available, and after hemming and hawing confessed she had no idea. She had a similar amount of knowledge about the specialty martinis. How long had this woman been working at Chappy's? Twenty minutes? When your waitress is too incompetent to take a drink order, there is a problem. We requested a new server.

From then on, service was fine - a slightly too-friendly (slightly drunk?) waitress with decent knowledge of the menu flitted ably about.

Chappy's serves a nice crusty loaf of bread to the table with four house-made butters. There is a garlic butter, a sweet cream butter, a strawberry butter, and an alligator butter. Admittedly, this is sort of a gimmick - the alligator butter just tastes a little extra salty and leathery - but it's a gimmick I got really excited about.

I this point I started forgetting about the bizarre service experience for all the right reasons.

An appetizer of seared tuna in Cajun spices was beautifully cooked and presented, with a generous portion for the table to share. A dark spice rub was complex and savory, with the tongue-satisfying tingle of salt, without tasting the least bit salty. Fried green tomatoes were as light as can be, while still staying Southern and fried and homey. Finding small crawfish tails hidden in the accompanying Creole hollandaise was a pleasant surprise, like a hazelnut in chocolate cake.

Our entrées arrived: seared scallops with spices similar to those found on the tuna, cooked until just past translucent. For me, two braised quails on a bed of Cajun rice that reminded me of Paella. As small game birds tend to be, the quails were difficult to eat, but just as well. I eat quickly and eating tricky food is a good way to slow down. That said, the total service time at Chappy's was 90 minutes - I think that's right on that mark for a 3-course meal at a nice restaurant, especially when the place is packed.

All of us agreed that the food was top notch. It exceeded our expectations in almost every way, but I can't help feeling that the whole evening was teetering on the edge of disaster. Only because we were able to overlook and move past the terrible initial service did we come out unscathed. It would have only taken one more mistake to ruin the dinner, but instead the kitchen did its job and sent us off for our New Year's Eve parties full, warm, and happy.

Chappy's on Church

1721 Church Street

Nashville, TN 37203-2921

(615) 322-9932